I have always been aware of midwives. When I was a child my parents had a good friend who was a midwife and my dad, who is a retired GP, was forever being phoned at weekends by midwives wanting him to go to the local GP maternity unit to do something or other. Midwives were part of the fabric of my childhood.
My mum talks incredibly positively about my birth and remembers her midwife, Sister Lydiatt, with a great deal of fondness. I was born at home in the days when home birth for second babies was the norm and not seen as risky or subversive. My sister’s birth had been in hospital and was quick, so quick that the midwife didn’t believe Mum when she said that she wanted to push. My birth was longer and harder apparently. I can’t work out from what she’s told me (and Dad can’t remember!) whether I was lying with my back to her back or didn’t have my chin tucked down properly.
Mum remembers having her brow mopped by the GP who was there to assist the midwife while Dad gave her an injection of pethidine- strange role reversal! Apparently they had to raise the bed up on bricks so the midwife didn’t hurt her back- no question in those days of giving birth where you feel like with the midwife following you about on her hands and knees! I was due on 12th December, but was a week late. Mum tells me that her main concern about my lateness was that Christmas was getting too close and would she be able to cook the Christmas dinner! I was born in the early hours of the 19th and met my sister as soon as she woke up. Mum describes that Christmas as the happiest she’s ever had and she did manage to cook the dinner!
Straight after school I trained as a nurse and did a two month maternity placement. I loved it, but was shocked at the medicalisation and the rarity of home births. But I was in awe of the midwives and student midwives, I thought they were wonderful, amazing. They didn’t seem so starchy and rule bound as the nurses in the main part of the hospital- they wore sandals and no tights! I suppose the sandals and tights were symbolic of the autonomy of the midwife: that while pregnancy and birth remain normal she is the lead carer, not a doctor.
Also that the history of midwifery is that of the wise woman on the edge of the village who you went to for a love potion, then later called on her services as a midwife. She was also the one to lay out the dead. She was the wise woman, the witch and for me in 1980s London these women embodied that and they deeply inspired me. I remember a Canadian midwife called Maureen in particular who encouraged me to become a midwife, made me believe that I could be a good one, and that meant a great deal.
Life took me in a different direction for a while and I spent several years living and travelling abroad. I spent a couple of years living in the rain forest in North Australia. I met a woman who had wanted a home birth and didn’t believe the health services would support her so she gave birth with only her partner present. She lived in a tipi in the forest and gave birth in a bath outside the tipi- both she and her baby were fine. She made her living by making and selling shaped cotton nappies and introduced me to the concept that disposable nappies are environmentally disastrous.
Telling this story now, as a midwife, my heart is in my mouth at all the things that could have gone wrong and I feel incredibly sad that she felt so distrustful of the local midwives that she felt this was the only way she could birth at home. That said I was, and still am, inspired by her strength, resilience and determination.
Another friend at this time introduced me to Ina May Gaskin’s ‘Spiritual Midwifery’. This book is wonderful. Ina May is a self taught midwife who learned her craft as part of a hippy community in 1960s USA. They wanted to be self sufficient and birth their babies at home and someone needed to learn what to do if things went wrong. She learnt about emergency procedures from obstetric text books and about the power of women and birth from the women she cared for. She is a strong believer in the importance of the hormone oxytocin- the ‘love hormone’. We produce this hormone when we are sexually aroused and it needs the right conditions: privacy, quiet, security, low lighting…
It also makes the uterus contract in labour and so, she believes, it naturally follows that labour too needs these conditions. Her book is a collection of birth stories and it is full of pictures of labour and birth. She is still a practising midwife with an international reputation.Eventually it seemed time to settle down, put down some roots. It was time to to train as a midwife myself. I was very idealistic, I was passionate about natural birth and the ability of women to give birth if only they were left alone. I was convinced that I would be an independent midwife. My training was a shock. The first birth I attended was a beautiful home birth and I saw many lovely hospital births, but most births I attended were very medicalised.
I found that many women are very scared of labour and the pain, scared of the risk of death that goes with birth and they want the drugs, the epidurals, the doctors… Home birth was often seen as irresponsible and risky. I saw they dark side of birth: death, disability and trauma. I discovered that being constantly on call (part of being an independent midwife) was not for me and giving women the care that many say they want and the government recommended in ‘Changing Childbirth’ (DOH 1993)- continuity of carer through pregnancy and a midwife that she’s met before to look after her in labour- is emotionally and physically exhausting. I finished my training traumatised and confused, questioning whether I could do this.
Nearly ten years on I am deeply committed to midwifery. My career has been a roller coaster and I have had times of being utterly disillusioned, wondering how else I could make a living, but there’s been many highs too. I work in a way that fulfils me, but doesn’t drain me- I have found balance. I work about two thirds of my time in the community and the rest in the hospital unit. I don’t very often care for a woman that I know in labour, but when I do it is truly wonderful.
How does all this tie in with Druidry? When I began my midwife training I moved to a new place where my neighbour was a friend of Bobcat’s and I found Druidry. I learned to see my role as a midwife to be equally that of a priestess holding a safe space as that of a technician. I work towards honouring and acknowledging the Gods of birth, giving Oxytocin space to play and asking Death to stay away allowing Life and Creativity to flourish.
Honouring the spirits of the woman, her partner and baby helps enormously in making connections and relationship. I believe that so much that really matters in midwifery, any caring role, is about being fully present, listening deeply, being nice and smiling even when you feel dreadful, about making relationship. I don’t want to say Druidry taught me this because you don’t have to be a Druid to do it; but Druidry helps, it helps me a great deal.
Sophie Otter
24/8/2007